Deadly Dozen: 12 Mysteries/Thrillers (177 page)

It
would
be here, in this construct—he’d never build one for this place again. Not this one, anyway.

The next thing he knew, Chloe had run back, wrapped her arms around his neck, and was squeezing him as hard as a five-year-old could.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

Were those
tears
in his eyes? He hugged her back.

“Goodbye, Chloe.”

She ran off again, turning once to wave.

Then the doors slid shut.

CHAPTER THREE

AS CHLOE’S TRAIN LEFT THE PLATFORM, Nick let the sounds and images of the construct evaporate and remained alone in the pitch blackness of the Terminus with the pain he’d resurrected and inflicted upon himself.

Victoria Station…

“Why must you do this to yourself, Nikolai?” A bright golden light outlined Tamara’s frame, though shadows somewhat obscured her features.

“Spying on me?” Nick said, not turning to face her.

“It’s my duty to keep an eye on you.”

“Then you’ve been remiss.”

Now he turned to face her directly. She smiled and gave him a maternal look. They were now standing in his construct of the boardroom of a corporate office building, staring out the window over endless clouds.

“Don’t tell me you’re upset that I’ve been away. It’s only been a hundred years. Is that what this is all about, Nikolai? ”

“I prefer Nick.”

“Since when?”

“Mid twentieth century.”

He wanted to leave. Tamara came over and put her hand on his shoulder.

“Oh, come now, I know what’s bothering you.”

“Do you, really?” He didn’t want to discuss what had happened at Victoria Station. Hopefully she wouldn’t bring it up.

“You’re getting impatient. Isn’t that it?”

“Not even remotely close.” Not entirely true, but at least she was on the wrong track.

“This delay is not due to neglect.” She pointed upwards. “As if anything could escape our Father’s cognizance. There’s always a reason, a purpose. This, like all trials, is a test of character. It’s His way of preparing you. You especially should know this, from your observations of the mortals.”

“Do you suppose you could dial back the condescension?”

“Sorry.” She laughed. “What’s really bothering you,
Nick
?” Her emerald eyes bore into him.

He wanted to open the window and just fly off. But where? He couldn’t hide from Tamara any more than he could hide from the commander in chief—whom he’d never seen, yet like every angel referred to as Father.

“Do you know how many reapers I’ve watched get promoted?” he said. “Reapers hundreds of years my junior with little experience where it counts? I used to be a highly decorated guardian, and now...” He sighed. “I think I’ve more than proven myself. Isn’t it high time we end the games and move forward?”

“What is it you want, really?”

“For one thing, I’m tired of this holding pattern between earth and the Terminus. I’m ready to cross the divide. I’m sick of this glass ceiling. Sick of spinning my blasted wheels.”

“My, you
have
spent too much time with them.”

“Them?”

“Mortals.” Tamara’s eyes narrowed. “The facial expressions, the syntax...You’re even speaking like them now.”

“I’m doing nothing of the sort.” After a hundred years of probation, the last thing he wanted was for her to think he’d squandered that second chance she’d risked so much to get him. Yet before this meeting was over, he’d surely disappoint her.

“I’m concerned, Nikolai. Perhaps you should take a leave of absence. Gather your thoughts for a century or so. I’ve always found that a short break helps alleviate the effects of...oh, what do they call it down there...” She closed her eyes for a moment. “Burnout! Yes, that’s it. Take a break, and when you come back this whole issue of the delay, your promotion, it’ll all work out.”

“I’m sorry, a hiatus won’t help.”

She started to protest, but the resolve in his face stopped her.

“Then what will?” she said.

Now that it was time to actually tell her, Nick found it even more difficult than he’d imagined.

“I’m sorry.” It wasn’t easy to keep his eyes on hers. “I can’t do this anymore.”

She looked at him for a long moment. And though she had always been the maternal figure, she now seemed like the child, bravely holding back her tears.

“I feared it might come to this. You’re not the first, you know.”

“I know.”

Now her eyes were filled with sorrow—and concern for him.

“Please, won’t you reconsider? Don’t do anything in haste.”

“I’ve had almost a hundred years to think this through.”

“As I said, haste.”

“Tamara...”

“Are you absolutely certain?”

“Yes. No. I’m not sure, at least not a hundred percent. I just have to try or I’ll go through eternity never knowing what might have been.” He stepped back and tried to smile. Poignantly. “I appreciate everything you’ve done, Tamara, more than I can say. But I have to try.”

She nodded. This was every angel’s choice. She could not take this right from him, could not forbid him.

“No matter what, Nikolai, you are loved with an everlasting love. And you can always come back.”

“I doubt that.” His heart ached even as he hardened it. “It’s too late.”

“It’s never too late.”

He kissed the top of her head.

“It is for me.” And with that he walked out of the boardroom, leaving Tamara alone by the window.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE ELEVATOR RIDE SHOULD HAVE TAKEN HIM to the lobby but went down a few levels further. Levels Nick didn’t know existed. He stood ramrod straight and hardened his gaze at the door. The elevator, which had been pumping in cool air and what sounded like
Fliegt heim, ihr Raben
from Wagner’s
Götterdämmerung
, seemed to have grown smaller. And warmer.

Brilliant. I hate opera.

Without a chime or any other indication as to where the elevator had landed, the music stopped.

The air conditioner’s fan stopped.

The lights went out.

Nick remembered he was still inside his own construct and snapped his fingers, but the darkness prevailed.

He groped around.

Cold doors. Buttons on the panel.

Still inside the construct.

“Splendid.” Trapped inside an elevator in the Corporate Office building, heaven knows how many levels beneath...

He pounded on the doors—was the elevator air growing stale?

“Hello?” Another finger snap. He pounded the door again. “Anyone out there?” He wedged his fingers in between the seams of the cold metal doors and pulled with all his might. The lights came on, the music resumed, the doors slid open.

A long hallway stretched before him, filled with light. Spotless white walls with no paintings, no markings, just pure white. At the end of the hallway one small sign hung above the white twin doors. He couldn’t read it from this distance so he walked close enough to see the sign clearly. Two bold capital letters:

A.R.

Beneath them, in small print:

ANGEL RESOURCES: NO APPOINTMENT NECESSARY

Even before his knuckles reached the surface of the doors, they yawned open. The unmitigated whiteness enveloped everything within to the point that Nick couldn’t see the floor, wall, ceiling, or anything in the room that seemed to have just swallowed him.

He spun around and could no longer see the door. A physically void space would not have fazed him ordinarily, but to return to the elevator he needed to find that door. In this room he could see nothing—couldn’t even tell it was a room. But out of nowhere someone suddenly appeared to join him in it.

A bespectacled gentleman dressed in a white suit, white shirt, and white tie sat at a desk, his hands folded before him. He had a full head of white hair, and looked quite harmless, which made Nick suspicious.

“May I help you?” he said.

“I seemed to have come to the wrong level.”

He lowered his bifocals and looked at Nick over the rims. “Ah, yes! Nikolai. We’ve been expecting you.” He extended his hand. Nick shook it.

“Expecting?”

“Yes, of course.” He pointed to Nick’s left. “Won’t you please make yourself comfortable?” A plush white chair appeared. Nick sat. “Your first time, I see.”

Nick leaned back into the wonderfully soft upholstery.

“It appears so, Mr...” He craned his neck to read the brass nameplate on the desk. “Mr. Morloch?”

“Why don’t you just call me Harold, hmmm? It’s a lot easier to remember. Tea?”

“Thank you.” The chair was so comfortable he felt he might actually fall asleep—whatever that was like. “Earl Grey, please.”

A delicate porcelain cup and saucer appeared in his hands, the cup steaming with aromatic tea. The ability to enjoy it was perhaps a happy byproduct of “spending too much time” with mortals. He took a delicious sip, then leaned back into the chair, surprisingly soothed.

Harold sipped from an identical teacup, his little finger pointing as he tilted it to his lips, then set it down in its saucer on the desk.

“So, Nikolai, welcome to A.R.”

Until now, he hadn’t known such a division existed. At which point did this cease to be his construct and become someone else’s, if indeed it were? He took a considerable sip of the Earl Grey and finished it. As he set the cup in its saucer, both vanished.

“You said you were expecting me?”

“Yes, well...Let’s see now, how best to explain?” Harold steepled his fingers. “You’ve had countless centennial performance reviews, no?”

“Countless.”

“A couple of millennial reviews?”

“And?”

“We're privy to more than just metrics, Nikolai. Your dossier contains data on your behavioral tendencies, noteworthy remarks, as well as your self-evals.”

“I didn’t plan on coming here.”

Harold peered over his horn-rimmed eyeglasses.

“Didn’t you?”

“Look, I’ve no time for games. What’s this all about?”

“No time? Fascinating expression.” For an instant Harold’s eyes burned with thinly veiled annoyance. And then, just as quickly, they returned to their placid state. “I take it you’re tired of the menial work.”

“Wouldn’t you be?”

“Fed up with the meaningless deaths.”

Nick sat up straight and leaned forward.

“You got all this from my doss—”

“Done with watching your efforts go unrecognized while younger, less experienced reapers pass you up.” His words accelerated. “You’re a warrior of the cosmos, yet relegated to—”

“Non-corporeal babysitting.” They said it at the same time.

“Precisely!” Nick said. “That’s why I’m tendering my resig—”

“Tut-tut!” Harold held up a hand. “There’s no need to resign, my young friend.”

“Young? I’ll have you know—”

“How would you like to get fast-tracked?”

This was clearly Harold’s construct, the way he commanded every element—the furniture, the monitors, the tea.

“I’m listening,” Nick said.

“Consider it a lateral move, initially. We’ll get you out of that dead-end department.”

“Oh?”

“For starters, how would you like to begin dealing with meaningful deaths?”

Interesting.

“I’d still be a reaper, though, wouldn’t I?”

“Only in the interim. We’d promote you to more meaningful projects soon enough. You’re sick of taking innocent children, good people who never did anything to deserve it. What if you took those who really do deserve it?”

Nick leaned back, crossed his arms. He liked it but wasn’t ready to let that show.

“Go on.”

Harold stood up, waved him over, and with two hands traced the outline of a large rectangle. A flat-screen television filled the space—looked like a 92-inch, 3D (rather, 4D or more), ultra high-def screen.

“Take a good look at all the people in the world who are dying, Nick.”

The screen flashed by with scenes of earthquakes, tsunamis, war, disease. Starving children, deathly sick families in Africa, India, homeless people in the United States freezing to death in dark alleys...It was hard to discern relative time in someone else’s construct, but as the scenes went by faster and faster Nick could swear that at one point a frame stood still for an extra nano-second: Victoria Station, where a little girl—